Hold On
by MinnieMay
Summary: A song fic to Hold On by Sarah Mclachlan it tells of Buffy and the gang’s experiences after her choice in The Gift. Very angsty. Slight B/S and S/D pairings. Please Read and Review!!


Title: Hold On

Title: Hold On

Author: Minnie-May

Disclaimer: I don't in any way own any of the Buffy characters. They are all owed by Joss Whedon…that lucky man! Hold On is a song by Sarah Mclachlan and of course I don't own it. ^_^ I just used it because it's such a great song…don't hurt me!

Summary: A song fic to Hold On by Sarah Mclachlan it tells of Buffy and the gang's experiences after her choice in The Gift. Very angsty. Slight B/S and S/D pairings. Please Read and Review!

Spoilers: Season Five spoilers especially from the Gift and Season Six spoilers up to Afterlife. 

Notes: Umm this is my first songfic so umm be please be gentle. Ohh and Read and Review please! It makes me happy to have reviews! 

Hold On

__

Hold on  
Hold on to yourself  
for this is gonna hurt like hell.

Buffy turned around from her sister, her beautiful baby sister, and stared off of the tower and into the opening portal. She knew what she had to do and she knew on some levels that in the end this was how it was all going to end anyway. She would give her life for the people that she loved. Still, she wasn't ready…she didn't want to die.  
  
_Hold on  
Hold on to yourself.  
You know that only time can tell_

So now she had made the speech, a darn good one if she did say so herself, I mean boy would Giles be proud. It was that do or die moment only now she was going to do both, do and die. It was that moment where everything stopped, the moment where the world stopped spinning and everything sort of froze and you just knew for certain that what you were doing was right. It was a moment that she didn't have any doubts, about anything, and it was also the moment that she jumped.   
  
_what is it in me that refuses to believe  
this isn't easier than the real thing._

Maybe she was the one that wasn't brave. It was possible that she was the one that didn't want to face life any longer. Didn't want to face her life as the slayer and all the things that she had to give up. Dawn, Riley, Angel and it was just too much. She had all those super powers and she couldn't even save her own *****mother *. What good were they anyway? She wondered what Dawn and the rest would do without her. 

__

My love  
you know that you're my best friend.

She thought briefly of Angel while the pain seared through her body and her lungs felt like they were about to burst. This wasn't fun, at all. But of course she had never really envisioned dying as one of the top ten things to do in your spare time anyway. She wondered if Angel would mourn for her, well of course he would, they had been soulmates, even more than soulmates. She wished that he had been there, maybe things would have turned out differently. Even if they hadn't she would have liked to say goodbye to him one last time. 

__

You know that I'd do anything for you  
and my love  
let nothing come between us  
my love for you is strong and true.

Buffy sent a goodbye out into the cosmos. Ok she didn't believe in all that fate and karma crap but hell it wasn't like she had a lot to lose. In fact she was about to lose it all, she was about to lose her life. 

Spike stared up from his place on the ground in horror. He was hurting from broken bones that he wouldn't have even considered could be broken, from internal bleeding and several nasty cuts. It was a long way down, and it seemed that now Buffy was finding that out the hard way. He had looked up just in time to see her approaching the end of the diving board, or at least that's what she used it for. Always was one for a splashy entrance….and exit apparently. He stared in pain as her body, the body of the woman he loved more than anything, hit the earth only a few feet from him. She was gone, his Slayer, his Buffy, his love, was actually gone and it hurt like hell. 

__

Am I in heaven here or  
am I...  
At the crossroads I am standing.

The next time that Buffy opened her eyes it was warm and safe. She had done what she had to do. She had saved her friends and the world for the last time. They were safe and she was warm and happy. For the first time in her life she had nothing to worry about. She was complete. 

__

So now you're sleeping peaceful  
I lie awake and pray  
that you'll be strong tomorrow  
and will see another day  
and we will praise it  
and love the light that brings a smile  
across your face.

Oh god  
if you're out there won't you hear me.  
I know we're never talked before

Spike stared at the casket. God what a morbid thought, but still there it was all shiny and dark with the moonlight bouncing off of it and making it almost reflective-like. Not that you would be able to see his reflection anyway, being the vampire that he was. Spike sat down cross legged on the ground by her coffin. It hadn't been lowered into the ground yet, although the marker had been put up. She saved the world a lot, he thought the phrase was fitting to put on her grave well because, hell it was true. Dawn had requested that it should be put on and had been relatively quiet ever since. He was worried about her, Spike had made a promise to Buffy to protect her little sister. But it was more than that really, he cared about his little nibblet and he wouldn't let anything happen to her. He was thinking that soon he should have that "it wasn't your fault" speech with her since no one else seemed to have the strength left in them to do it. Buffy's death had left them all with a big gaping hole somewhere deep inside their souls. 

So Spike did what he had come there to do. Taking a glance to either side of him he took a deep and unneeded breath and released it. Then he clasped his hands together and began to pray. It only seemed fitting that he should pray for the Slayer. He wasn't even exactly sure what he was praying for, or even how to pray for that matter. He stumbled through a very odd and emotional prayer for more than a half-hour, silently telling of all the times that Buffy had just been the most perfect person he had ever met. Then he got up, dusted off his jacket and walked away into the dark of the cemetery. It was still a few hours before the sun came up, maybe he would go and visit Dawn. Try to keep at least some of his promise to Buffy.

__

and oh god  
the man I love is leaving  
won't you take him when he comes to your door.

Dawn wiped her tears on the sleeve of her shirt and accepted the bag of popcorn that Spike offered. After a long and painful heart to unbeating heart talk they had decided to do the best thing when grieving. Pull out the old tearjerker movies and cry their troubles away. So far after watching one hopeless movie after another Dawn began to feel a little less bad about everything. Sure it didn't make anything go away but it helped her deal, and she found that all that mattered was making it from one moment to the next. Without Buffy everything seemed wrong and upside down. She had never realized before how much all of their lives depended on the blonde slayer and now that she was gone if felt like everything was falling apart. 

Dawn looked over at Spike and smiled. At least she had Spike still. At times she felt that only Spike really understood her or at least took the time to try. Dawn lowered her head onto his shoulder and closed her eyes. She couldn't remember the last time that she had gotten any decent amount of sleep, certainly not since Buffy---No don't think about that. Maybe she could get some sleep now though; she felt safe with Spike and oddly at ease. Dawn slowly felt herself being pulled under by the sleepiness of a few hard and saddening days and she let it take her to a place where she, her mom, and Buffy were riding the carousal around and around and around…

__

Am I in heaven here or  
am I in hell  
at the crossroads I am standing.

She was at the top of the tower again, in a black dress and with blood dripping from her knuckles. She had been in the warm place, just being really, when suddenly something happened. It was just that one moment she was happy, at perfect peace, and the next she was awake, in a dark place in the ground under layers of dirt. She was buried alive. If those two things combined weren't enough to leave a scar she had gotten out of the coffin only to find that her town was up in flames. Biker demons were going around wreaking havoc everywhere, destroying property, hurting people. The destruction of the buffybot was enough to send her over the edge, how could something like this be happening to her. She was happy, she was at peace. God, finally she was at peace! Why couldn't she stay there, why couldn't she be comforted and loved instead of all the fighting and pain? Her friends reached out to her, she barely recognized them through the thick haze she was walking around in, but she didn't want their comfort or support. She wanted to be back in the happy place where everything was right. Then she saw it, the tower, the thing that had marked the end of her human life. She wondered as she stood on the unsteady structure why she was so fascinated by it, by her own death. Was it just something that she had imagined? Had all of it been a very surreal dream? Suddenly something else flashed into her mind, a question she hadn't thought of before. Was this hell? Had she done something wrong that she should end up back here, where everything was wrong and there was all this pain and sadness? Where everything was sharp and heavy and dark?

She heard her sister's voice behind her, talking to her, begging her to come off of the ledge and get out of the tower. She knew she should answer, should reply with something because it wasn't her sister's fault that she had been bad, that she was now back in hell where everything was bad. The tower swayed a few times; first just a little bit and then a lot more. Dawn screamed her name, calling her to help and Buffy felt something inside of her snap. Buffy was back, whether she liked it or not, and that meant that she had people to take care of. Running down the long catwalk, only in the opposite direction as when it had all stopped Buffy grabbed Dawn and jumped onto a rope to get them off of the tower. 

She was back, she was home, and she was needed. 

__

So now you're sleeping peaceful  
I lie awake and pray  
that you'll be strong tomorrow  
and we will see another day  
and we will praise it  
and love the light that brings a smile  
across your face

Spike stared at Buffy as she walked down the steps. At first he had thought that it was the bot but he saw in her face that it wasn't. Buffy looked sad, abandoned and scared. Totally out of her element and oddly innocent. Spike took her by the hands and led her into the living room of her home while Dawn went to go find some bandages for her hands. All his anger at Dawn had melted away and he was only left with a feeling of relief and of uncertainty. What did her being back mean? How was it even possible? Buffy asked some questions and Spike answered, asked some of his own. Somehow he felt more connected to the slayer than ever before. Buffy was vulnerable and needed someone to talk to, someone who would understand and accept her and for some reason it seemed that no one could do that quite as well as Spike could. Sitting there, staring at Buffy and her bleeding knuckles, the result of the poor girl having to smash her way out of her own coffin he wondered what exactly the Scoobies had done. They were messing with something they didn't understand and it would come back to bite them in the ass, he was sure of it. Magic always had consequences. 

Always.   
  
_Hold on  
hold on to yourself  
for this is gonna hurt like hell._

Buffy walked up to the line of light that filtered near the mouth of the dark alleyway and turned around to address Spike. "Don' t you ever tell them what I told you. Ever" she said before walking around the corner, leaving a dazed and confused Spike in the process. Buffy didn't really understand yet what had made her decide to spill about where she had actually been after she died. Everyone was so proud of themselves, they had saved her from hell, they had brought their best friend back from a horrible place. If only they knew. But of course they never would, they couldn't because it would just crush them. Buffy couldn't have expected them to know that she had gone to heaven. She knew that her secret was safe with Spike, and once again she felt the odd bond that had formed between her and the vampire. He was the only one that she could ever imagine telling that too, well maybe Angel. She wondered briefly about Angel, and about Cordy and even Giles, she missed them all. 

She would just have to forget, forget about everything that had happened. Turn on a smile and pretend that her friends hadn't well meaningly sentenced her to hell. Her own personal hell; that's what Sunnydale was. 

The End 


End file.
